


babydoll, i recognize

by goodboots



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Alpha!Stiles, Angst, Crack, Derek talks about his feelings, Fluff, I said it was crack okay?, M/M, vaguely post season three, welcome to my self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 02:39:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboots/pseuds/goodboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Stiles adapts to being a werewolf surprisingly well. Like, too well. Derek should probably start explaining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	babydoll, i recognize

**Author's Note:**

> Teen Wolf happened to me, you guys. There's no known cure, so, you know, enjoy? Title is from "Wolf Like Me" by TV on the Radio, which, if that's not already the official song of this fandom, it should be.

After nearly two solid years of dealing with supernatural fuckery from an outsider perspective--getting threatened by hunters, assulted by faeries, generally screwed with by witches, and they still don't talk about that one time with the gremlins--Stiles succumbs to peer pressure and actually _becomes_ supernatural fuckery during senior year, on a windy night in October less than a week before Halloween. The irony is not lost on him.

"You couldn't have picked a less stereotypical time to werewolf me?" he announces from the the bottom of the staircase in the newly rebuilt Hale house. He's been up late thinking about this, and around three in the morning his eyelids started to droop and he thought _Halloween, of course!!_ which actually isn't that great of an explanation in regular daylight but it's all he can come up with to explain this last week of weirdness. "Really? Because this timing thing is totally your fault."

"Don't make 'werewolf' a verb," Derek says, glancing up from Issac's laptop with a pained expression on his face.

That's kind of a throwback for them; Derek hasn't looked physically upset by his prescence in the pack in awhile, not since Scott and Issac told him it was either let Stiles in as a full member or they were voting him out as alpha.

"And that means he gets kitchen privleges and movie night picks and everything," Scott had insisted, standing in the half-decorated living room in the half-rebuilt Hale house, arms crossed and defiant. "Treat him the same as you treat us."

"Dude, I'm not trying to get him to adopt me," Stiles had grumbled, and Issac broke down laughing, and Derek mumbled some kind of _yeah sure whatever_ and let him come along on their training sessions even though the work frequently made him pass out from exhaustion those first few weeks and someone would have to settle him in the Jeep's passenger seat and drive him home.

It's paying off now, though. Ten months or so of living like a werewolf while human was actually excellent prep for becoming a werewolf. Too excellent. He saw what a mess Scott was after Peter bit him, saw him struggle with control issues, with the wolf wanting to act on instinct--he's still dealing with it, and that's just one more reason it's not fair or normal that Stiles woke up the day after the bite feeling like he'd had a great sleep and wondering why the pack was keeping vigil in his bedroom.

That's also why he's been running google searches like _bitten on Samhain_ and _canine ADHD_ and _ARE SOME WEREWOLVES JUST REALLY GOOD AT EMOTIONAL STABILITY_ instead of putting his new stamina to good use and playing _Call of Duty_ all night.

"No, but, what I'm saying is, do you think the Halloween thing has something to do with," he makes a twirly gesture with both hands around his torso, meant to encompass his entire being but not conveying it very well, "this, uh, situation?"

Derek doesn't know about the google searches, or his current existential crisis. Or, yeah, he does, but he probably thinks it's just because Stiles almost died and had to become a werewolf instead.

He keeps offering advice, like instructing him to make a direct pact with the Argents right after he woke up werewolfy, or subtly jabbing him in the hip when he started to growl at a stray cat hanging out by his Jeep. It was really helpful those first couple days when he couldn't deal with his suddenly super-intense sense of smell or the way his dad's heartbeat jumped when he turned up at his front door and started crying because Stiles wasn't dead, but lately it's just been weird.

That was then. It's been a full week since Derek bit him, and usually he just looks annoyed at Stiles' constant questions.

Like right now, when he barely glances up from the screen and says, "Stiles, what the fuck are you talking about?"

Stiles drops into the open chair beside him, slumps his elbows onto the table and drops his head over them, sullen.

"Nothing," he says into his arms. "Ignore my existential crisis."

He's been staying in the Hale house since the rogue hunters stabbed him in the chest with a machete. Scott had howled and lunged for the guy's throat, but he was dead before he got close enough to attack, an arrow clean through his head.

The machete thing: not pleasant. It missed his vital organs but pierced enough blood vessels that according to Deaton he should have died in about twenty seconds. Luckily he held out a little longer; long enough for Derek to fall down beside him and turn him face-up.

He heard him from far away, his head pounding too loud in his chest. He heard his name, Scott and Issac and Erica and Boyd and Jackson and Allison shouting in the background, heard Derek up close against his ear saying, "Stiles, Stiles, do you want it?"

He remembers thinking I'm actually dying here, remembers choking out the _yes_ before the world went blank, but he can't remember being bitten.

He has the mark, still.

"It'll take longer to heal," Derek said that morning while he made them breakfast--bacon and toast with the pack's assorted cupboardful of sugary cereals. "They fade some, but bite marks will scar like a human injury would.

"Mine's still going," Issac had said from his seat at the table, holding up his wrist to show off. Faint lines, hardly the imprint of teeth. Stiles had seen worse marks on Lydia when she wore jagged bracelets.

Stiles has the bite on his left shoulder, an open-mouth pressing, deep and bloody those first few days, healed over with purple-green burising now. He's fine with it. It's easy to hide under clothes, covered by most of his shirts, and it doesn't hurt as it heals.

He checks on it a lot, though. Keeps waking up with his right hand crossed over, gripping the juncture of his neck, thumb worrying it in slow circles. Dreams sometimes about the moment he felt the bite take, the exact second the extra senses kicked in and he heard every heartbeat in the clearing before he lost conciousness. Scott never mentioned his bite scar bothering him, and Issac and Derek's explanations are less than helpful. He figures it's tied in with the taking-to-being-a-werewolf-too-well thing, but, hey, no evidence at all yet.

Isaac went to school after breakfast, but Stiles still has a doctor's note--God bless Melissa McCall--giving him the rest of the week off for a severe bout of typhoid fever, apparently. He would have picked tuberculosis himself, as far as unlikely diseases go, but what can you do?

He went for a run in the woods to kill some time--it started out human, in track shorts and his old gym shirt--but six miles in he was still kind of pissed off, and he shifted into the wolf and lost track of time. He only meant to be gone an hour or two, but it's after noon now, direct light slanting sharply through the wall of windows in the kitchen that lead onto the back deck. The windows were his suggestion in the redesign; he figured the pack had had enough of living in deep, dark places, especially Derek and Isaac. Those two needed some sunlight.

Like right now, the natural light is making Derek look pretty nice, softening the sharp lines of his face. He looks downright cozy in old jeans and the sweater Lydia got him last Christmas, checking his email or stocks or whatever. Seeing him on the laptop is still strange. Stiles always forgets that Derek is actually a person who grew up with an internet connection and an Xbox and, like, normal stuff.

He also always forgets that being a werewolf makes him Derek's particular problem now, and he shouldn't be surprised to be hauled up by the back of his neck and shook out like an unruly puppy.

"What existential crisis," Derek says, totally deadpan.

His eyebrows are somewhere between _I'm mocking your pain_ and _should I actually be concerned here?_

"The werewolfy one I'm currently in the middle of," Stiles answers, just to be a jerk. "How is this my life?"

"You said yes," Derek reminds him, not moving. "You agreed to the bite."

"I know, I know, and--look, I'm really glad not to be dead right now, believe me, but I kind of figured there might be a template for this, you know? Like seeing Scott through it would make me more ready, but--" he sighs. 

"Wait," Derek says, eyebrows inching ever higher in disbelief. "You're upset because things are too easy?"

"I'm _worried_ because things are too easy," Stiles counters, feeling reasonable. "I'm upset because Scott changed and his whole life changed, not that I'm envious of the way that started out--fuck, I don't know, it just doesn't feel real yet. Maybe after the full moon..."

Then Derek's shoving him away, an open-handed push toward the living room couch, and not-quite-disgusted look as he turns and strides into the ktichen. He comes back with a full glass of water.

"Drink that," he says, setting it on the coffee table. "You're dehydrated, it's making you anxious."

"I'm me, it's making me anxious," Stiles mutters into the glass but drains it all the same.

He's not expecting Derek to slump down onto the coffee table across from him, looking extra-serious.

"I'm sorry," he says, throwing Stiles for a loop again. "I should have warned you better. I didn't consider the change could--"

"Could what?" Stiles waits for the bad news that it's not taken right, he's going to turn into a kanima or werebat or something instead.

Derek rubs a hand over his face. "You don't know what you are."

"Umm, yeah," Stiles says, really not seeing the point of this conversation at all. "I'm a werewolf now. I'm all about the self-awareness."

"That's not what--you are a werewolf," he says, and pauses.

Okay, reassuring. He's gotten used to being part of the pack, that's all, and he'd hate to get kicked out just for being an accidental wereseal or whatever.

Only then it all gets shot to hell because Derek opens his mouth and says, "You don't know what _kind_ of werewolf."

Stiles flounders. "Is this a good or bad werewolf kind of thing? Because I vote good. Good, dependable, researchy Stiles werewolf, all truced-up and on good terms with the Argents and everything."

"It's a werewolf heirarchy thing," Derek says, standing up and looking like he wants to flee the entire conversation, and that makes even less sense.

"I'm a beta wolf, like the others," he says, confused, and stands up too, getting ready to follow if Derek does a runner. "I'm your beta."

Derek laughs, just a little nervously.

"When in your life have you ever been a beta, Stiles? You're nobody's second."

Stiles is too taken aback not to feel the sting. "Fine, okay, I'm not that great of backup now but I'll get better, Boyd's teaching me how to fight. I'm strong now, and I'll get better at handling myself, it's just--" oh, god, he's rambling.

Derek doesn't leave the room, just crosses over onto the couch beside him.

"That's not--come here," he pulls Stiles down on the squishy couch and settles him down, hand cautious and calming on his shoulder. "You and Scott were a pack long before I came back to town, but you don't need me to tell you who was the brains of the operation."

He's weirdly offended, and Derek must smell it or read it on his face because he amends: "Scott's loyal, and smart, and dedicated, but he'd be the first to admit he's not a planner."

Which, yeah, that's very true.

"You've been looking out for the entire pack from day one," Derek goes on, "even when I thought it would be easier to pretend you weren't a part of it. You were the alpha long before I was; there was no way you'd come through the bite as a beta, or an omega."

There's so many things wrong with that sentence Stiles doesn't know where to begin, but he'll start with _you were the alpha._

"Because I already had a pack?" he says, convinced he's misunderstanding.

"Because you were already leading a pack. You don't have to earn their respect or trust," and Stiles realizes he's dead serious about this because Derek doesn't even sound jealous when he says it, doesn't sound pissed off that it took him so long to get the rest of the pack to give him that devotion. He sounds _proud._

"You are strong, Stiles," he says, reaching out to grip his arm, the biceps that he's been working on all summer and has really started to build the last few days. He's been trying to work off his scrawniness for over a year, and it's slow up steady going; the werewolf thing definitely accelerated things. "You always have been, where it counts. You're going to make a great alpha."

So yeah, he is physically stronger now, but he's also the same, falling over the edge of the bed in the spare room, tripping over his own feet when he races Isaac to the Jeep. The _Twilight_ books lied to him, apparently. Supernatural creature does not automatically equal grace and beauty.

"You're my alpha," Stiles tells Derek, and realises how much he needs that to be true.

Derek bit him, yeah, but that could have been anyone. Derek's been his alpha long before he was a werewolf, since before they really accepted him into the pack. Been the person he turns to in a crisis, or on a bad day, a good day--all those mediocre days where they've saved no lives but no one's in danger of dying either so they just grab a milkshake and go to the movies instead. Derek's the person he can go to for anything, who makes him feel better just by being around--

 _Oh, shit,_ he thinks distantly.

"You figure it out yet?" Derek asks, an unlikely smile stretching the corners of his mouth.

"Not even a little bit," Stiles admits, and kisses him.

He's expecting a rejection--he and Lydia are good now, she's a pal and all, but his major experience with crushes centres on her and he has a lot of experience with rejection. So he's startled when Derek fucking _melts_ into the kiss, brings both his hands up against the back of Stiles' neck and holds them there, the lightest pressure.

"What," Stiles says, breaking away, and holy shit, how is his voice that breathy? This is not his life. 

Derek pulls back far enough that they can look each other in the eye, and no farther than that. "That was your move, not mine. I was waiting until June."

"June?"

"June 7th," which doesn't even make sense because that's Stiles' birthday--oh. 

Stiles feels his head moving in a slow side-to-side are you kidding me shake that his body seems to have initiated independantly of his mind, which honestly just wants to get back to the making out. "You were waiting for me to turn eighteen. That's really--that's really. You like me?"

"Clearly the change of plans has broken you, " Derek says. 

"You _like_ me," he repeats, feeling weirdly triumphant. "Why has this never been mentioned before? I've been living in your house all week, you see me every freaking day!"

"I guess, if I'm explaining about why you're an alpha, I might as well put it all out there. They're kind of interconnected."

Today is totally Stiles' day. Only--

"Wait, when you say interconnected...?"

"Packs can have two alphas," Derek says, letting his head fall against the back of the couch. "They usually do, two to lead the others and keep them in line. A pair."

"Oh, shit," Siles says out loud, and Derek laughs.

Derek's laugh--the real one he lets out when he's surprised, the one where he shows too many teeth and his head tilts back and his chest rises--that's got to be Stiles' favourite thing in the world.

But he pulls away again, because he has to ask:

"Did you know that would happen, if you werewolfed--um, if you gave me the bite?"

"Yes," Derek says, pressing him back into the couch cushions and Stiles thinks for a second it's going to be another kiss (he'd be completely fine with that, really, enthusiastic even,) but he only noses the curve of his neck, his open collar, close to tje bite mark he left there. "You smelled like a leader, that first night in the woods. You always do, god, I--I used to wonder what it would be like, if you could come out for the moon."

He presses a nipping kiss onto the flesh below his ear, and Stiles shivers. "I could tell, I knew you'd be good," and when Stiles pulls out of what can only be described as a conversation-hug, he sees Derek's eyes are back to blue, pupils blown wide and dreamy.

"I would be," he says, not entirely sure what he's talking about.

They kiss a long time, longer than Stiles has ever kissed anyone even including the three weeks he went out with the drama kid from Beacon Heights that Danny set him up with before he realised he could never date anyone who didn't know about werewolves.

Derek's a good kisser, but he's not surprised by that--he's surprised by how squirmy he is, and all the little noises he makes, so much more eager than he would have imagined.

Not that he's imagned kissing Derek before, much. Just, like, hypothetically.

Stiles rolls them off the couch, onto the floor. It puts him over Derek and he likes that, likes it a lot, but Derek must not because he rolls them again, off the plush area rug and onto the cold hardwood, caging him in with his body and catching his lips again. He presses Stiles down onto the rug, brackets his hands above his head. He's growling into the kiss and Stiles feels his hackles rise, his whole body going tense.

He breaks away and says, "Wait, wait, hold on, are we--is this a dominance fight happening right now?" he has to ask.

Derek blinks down at him. "Oh."

"Is it? Because I'm not sure I'm down for pack dynamics carrying into the bedroom," he says, then realises what he just said. "Um. Not that we're going to your bedroom."

Derek shakes his head like he's forcefully clearing it, then kind of pushes him to the side and sits up. Before Stiles has time to get offended about being pushed away he pulls him back into his lap, settling arms around him.

"We're not going to do that," he says, lips close against the shell of Stiles's ear.

"Right, okay, that makes sense, I probably just misunderstood with all the making out--"

Derek laughs again, lightly, and nips at his shoulder with blunt teeth. "We're not going to fight to be the alpha, I mean. We can do anything you want in bed."

That shouldn't be so hot, but it is. It is, because Derek just offered him anything, and all of a sudden the trapdoors and locked boxes of Stiles' mind all fly open at the same time, and he's thinking of a hundred half-suprpressed daydreams. Derek pressing him up against his bedroom door, like the times when he used to loom menacingly instead of talking things out; Derek slipping a hand down his pants, or dropping to his knees, or bending him over the Camarro.

Derek looks at him like he knows exactly what's going through his head.

"I was really not expecting this as part of the werewolf package," Stiles says awhile later, a break in the resumed kissing while Derek sucks a bruise onto his collarbone. "You could have told me."

A terrible thing occurs to him.

"Derek, if I'd never taken the bite--if I never got hurt and just stayed human forever, would you have--why didn't you ever--?"

Derek sighs. "Can you imagine, from a hunter's prespective, what that would look like? An unstable alpha taking a human counterpart?"

"You kind of did that already," he says, because his achievements will not be undervalued. "If I was really as valuable as you're telling me, I was definitely your counterpart. And, uh, those first few months were a little unstable."

That's sugarcoating it hardcore, that first year and a bit was a fucking disaster, but Derek doesn't need the reminder and Stiles doesn't need to spoil the mood entirely.

"You were sixteen, and you had no reason to trust me. Telling you wouldn't have accomplished anything except confusing you. I figured it could wait until you knew what you'd be getting into. I was going to bring it up after your birthday."

Stiles considers this, tracing his thumbnail along Derek's collarbone.

"If--if I hadn't been sixteen when you came back to town, if I were, like, twenty-three or something," and that's honestly just the first age that pops into his head, never mind it's how old Derek is now, "would you have--"

"Yes," Derek says too quickly. "I would have asked, given you a choice--it should always be a choice--but I would have told you all of it, that you would be stronger than a normal werewolf. I would probably have tried to persuade you," he adds, like he's not proud of it but it's the truth so he might as well say it.

"You didn't tell me, though. When you did it."

Derek shakes his head, a sheepish look on the wolf. "You were going to die without it. I didn't want to--to introduce any more factors."

It takes Stiles a minute to figure out what that means. "You think I would have said no?"

Derek doesn't respond with words, just keeps stroking Stiles's side.

"Oh my god, you enormous moron. You really thought _I better not tell Stiles he has a special werewolf destiny, it might make him choose death instead?_ Come on. You know I would have picked being with--being a werewolf."

When Derek speaks again, it's against the back of his neck.

"If you had said no, it would have destroyed the entire pack."

"I wouldn't have said no," Stiles says, and it's not until the words are out there that he realizes they're true. He wouldn't have said no in a life or death situation, obviously, and he might have said yes if Derek had just told him that he could. He's not stupid, he can read between the lines: a pack with two alphas is stronger, safer, more stable. Him getting bitten might be the best news the new Hale pack has seen all year; it's certainly the best news Stiles has ever heard, if this is the prize.

He thinks he might tell Derek that, sometime, but today's seen enough emotional revelations. He doesn't want to cause an allergic reaction to feelings.

"Couldn't risk it," Derek says, and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> You'll have to excuse me, I've only been watching this show for like three days and basically bingeing on fic at the same time so the line between canon and fanon is irretrievably blurred.
> 
> I am now on [tumblr](http://missgoodboots.tumblr.com/), because that's where fandom lives, apparently.


End file.
